The college was founded in 1964 in the heart of Bourj Hammoud in
Beirut, Lebanon. Its slogan is “work
ennobles.”

It has 195 students under Principal Vicken Avakian and 35 teachers.
The college follows the official Lebanese government curriculum, supplemented
by the educational plan of the Armenian National Schools.

My friend Shant Demirdjian (@ShantDotMe), who
featured in Mich Café’s commemoration last year, teaches computer science at
Levon & Sophia and helped me get testimonies from four students.

Shant is also a web developer and a photographer in his spare time.
His pictures of Armenia can be viewed at
his blog site,Shant.me – My Photo Blog.

Ninety-eight years on, the
Armenian Genocide is still a subject matter that hits a raw nerve with
Armenians worldwide.

Roughly half the Ottoman
Empire’s 2,500,000 Armenians were killed during the Armenian Genocide through
wholesale massacres and deportations by dint of forced marches.

Armenians around the globe
commemorate the tragedy on April 24, the day in 1915 when 250-300 Armenian
leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople – the present-day
Istanbul -- were rounded up, deported and killed.

The Ottoman military at that
time uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds
of miles, without food or water, to the desert of what is now Syria.

Since then,
the pomegranate was adopted as a symbol for Armenians.

The
narrative is that during the 1915 Genocide and exodus, pomegranate was the only
food mothers could find to feed their offspring. Those marching could also
count the days with the pomegranate seeds. It is said that each fruit, however
big or small, holds 365 seeds!

So how does the young generation feel about the Genocide?

Gashavan in Dilijan, Hribsime Church and Noravank Monastary in Armenia. Photos by Liliane Assaf